Inductive Reasoning

    Inductive reasoning is a branch of logic.  In a valid inductive argument, the conclusion (consequent) is believed to be true on the basis of its antecedents.  For example, when all swans are observed to be white, a student may easily reach the conclusion that all swans are indeed white.  A generalization is made based on the evidence gathered.  However, when a black swan is observed, the generalization must be thrown out based upon the new data (antecedents).  Do you recall that the black swan is native to Australia? Well, it is! Before the great voyages of discovery, the black swan was never observed in Europe and England, and it remained unknown to westerners until Australia was discovered and explored.  That swans could be black would have been a false conclusion by anyone other than the indiginous people of the land down under before the exploration of the Australian continent!

    Hilda Taba believed that students make generalizations only after data are organized.  She believed that students can be led toward making generalizations through concept development and concept attainment strategies.  In A Teacher's Handbook to Elementary Social Studies , Hilda Taba describes generalizing as a higher order of thinking when compared to forming concepts.

"Generalizations like concepts, are the end products of a process of an individual's abstracting from a group of items of his experience those elements of characteristics the items share, and expressing his recognition of this commonality in a way that is convincing to others. The two major differences between concepts and generalizations are, first of all, that in generalizations the verbal form of the process is expressed as a sentence rather than a word or phrase as in the case of concepts, and second, that generalizations are here taken as representing a higher level of thinking than concepts in that they are a statement of relationships among two or more of these concepts" (1971, p. 72).

Taba, H., Durkin, M. C., Fraenkel, J. R., & NcNaughton, A. H. (1971). A teacher's handbook to elementary social studies: An inductive approach (2nd ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

For more on deductive and inductive reasoning, refer to the Reed College Doyle Owl.